THE BOTTOM LINE: The system is in crisis, and the politicians are not the only ones to blame.

WILLIAM GREIDER HAS ALL THE credentials to be another Inside-the-Beltway TV- talk-show bore serving up sound-bite-size portions of predictable punditry. Back in 1972 when he was covering the McGovern campaign, Greider was one of Timothy Crouse's original Boys on the Bus. While an editor of the Washington Post, he prompted David Stockman's explosive 1981 confessions that Reaganomics was a fraud. A dogged reporter undeterred by smoke-and-mirrors complexity,...